Comparing the integration of immigrants in North America and Western Europe: Importance of the second generation

Richard Alba is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Educated at Columbia University, he arrived at CUNY in 2008, after three decades at the State University of New York in Albany.
Throughout his career, Dr. Alba has focused on the changes ensuing from immigration, both within immigrant-origin populations and to the mainstream society. For the United States, he has documented and theorized about these changes in such books as: Italian Americans: Into the Twilight of Ethnicity (1985); Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (1990); Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (2003, cowritten with Victor Nee); and Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More Integrated America (2009).
Increasingly, Dr. Alba has emphasized a comparative perspective, and has done research in France and in Germany, with the support of Fulbright grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and Russell Sage Foundation. His most recent books involve trans-Atlantic comparisons. They include: The Children of Immigrants at School (2013, coedited with Jennifer Holdaway) and Strangers No More (2015, coauthored with Nancy Foner).
He has been elected President of the Eastern Sociological Society (1997-98) and Vice President of the American Sociological Association (2000-01). In 2008, he received the Award for a Distinguished Career of Scholarship, bestowed by the International Migration section of the American Sociological Association.